new studio

[deeaa*]

Finished building me a studio!

Turned out great. Soundproofed and all...here's some pics:



Hard to tell from the pic but there's enough room behind the monitor&desk to walk in so the sound isn't spoiled by wall proximity, plus makes for easy switching of connections.

Have to get a new battery for the power outlets remote control, but I'll have remote controlled power so I can easily switch off monitors, amp etc. and also printers and main powers without reaching for switches at all.

The machine in the other room works great, I only needed a couple of USB cable extensions, normal monitor cables etc. were quite fast enough!



Happy camper in front of the greenscreen wall portion (for YouTube video making)



Dad also came to see how it turned out.



Note the funky mic stand boom I made out of an old desk lamp base.

Actually pretty much everything in the room I got used from thrift stores from little gadgets and supports like these and electric radiators, lots of sound panels for free, refurbished old desktop...everything recycled.

The most expensive single elements were probably the electric lines and switches etc...some 60 yards of electric cord went in. Overall I'd say the cost came to maybe $400-500 in total, including the new bookcase and LED lights from IKEA....and circa 3 days of hard work by me doing all the drilling and electrics installations, painting etc.



The boys realized it's a nice place to watch Netflix too :-)



This view shows the guitar playing area and the bass trap in the corner. Not excessive amounts of room but quite enough. I think I can just squeeze in a small electric drumkit still, and play in the room with up to 4 guys at once, although it will be rather intimate already.

Also visible the left side floodlight for video making. They have their own separate switches naturally.

[Tig***]

Very clever use of space and materials, Dee. I like the mic stand, too!

[Spudman***]

Cool. My trees over the monitor are real ones though.

I'm about to hook up my old 19" monitor to use along with the 23." I'd like to have the mixer up all the time but it takes up a lot of screen space. Also, VST controls could go there too. I also have the Korg Nano Kontrol. What recording software do you use? I finally upgraded to Win 7 mainly because Cubase 6 wouldn't fully work in XP and I also couldn't get the Nano working either. The last couple of days I've gotten everything working except the Nano.

Looks like you're ready to start getting some work done now.

[Duffy]

Nice studio Deeaa. Your dad looks baffled, or is that just my impression. He wouldn't be an analog man would he?

The kids are well at home. Your oldest son stands a chance of becoming an awesome guitar player some day, under your tutelage.

I suppose we will be seeing some new video clips?

[deeaa*]

Thanks guys!

Yep I added the picture wallpaper on a whim because they were on sale...figured it might lessen the basement feeling :-)

I'm using Cubase 6 as well in w7, but I'm using the 32bit version for now although it's 64bit w7. The 64bit version has some plugin issues and so far the 32 has worked flawlessly anyhow.
Been thinking that once I get the current projects done (I have two songs for Spookbox to finish, just drums now, a coupla P-43 tunes and a nine song album I'm doing for a band as a paid session singer)...when those are a wrap I'mm update to w8 and see how the Cubase works with that and 64 bits.

I've also considered updating to what was it, Cubase 6.5 or something, which they offered as a free update to all who bought it...just after I bought mine :-( so it'd cost like 150;- or something to update. We'll see.

The Nanokontrol works really well. It was a bit complicated to get to working, and sometimes it just...vanishes from Cubase for whatever reason.

[deeaa*]

cnt. I think there's something about the way the machine goes to sleep, concerning the USB midi controllers. Sometimes when it wakes up from sleep, it won't find all my devices, usually the Nanocontrol and sometimes the Shuttle wheel controller.

But just in case - I just went to Device Setup menu in Cubase, then I selected 'Generic remote' in cubase and and hit Import and loaded the .x something file was it that I downloaded from Korg site and includes the control map. I set it to control VST 1-8 by default and keep it in scene 1. That way, it will always control the first 8 channels I have in Cubase, and then I just always put all the 8 buses I use normally (one for kick, snare, drums, bass, guitars, vox) and use it as a master controller for that.

The 9th Nanocontrol channel then controls the master volume and the solo/mute buttons change between which VST channels it controls, mainly I sometimes use it to control the EQ as sweeping the EQ curve with real knobs is often much more intuitive and easy than with a mouse.

[Spudman***]

Thanks for the info deeaa. Now I won't have to worry about losing my mind. My Nano vanishes too when the computer comes out of sleep. I'll try what you did by downloading the info from Korg. Right now I have it set a generic midi devise and it isn't working. I know it will work, but it sure is a pita to get it to do so.

I'm running C6.5 in Win 7 64 and haven't noticed any issue yet, but I haven't done a lot either so far. I didn't upgrade to C6.54 because the guys on the Steinberg forum really started complaining after they did. Also, you might want to check out what they say about moving to Win8. So far there is a lot of complaining about that too.

Anyway, your setup looks great. I'm still learning how to navigate C6 so maybe I'll throw a question your way once in a while.

[deeaa*]

I just checked, they now only offer an upgrade to C 7 for 200€...no 6.5 update available any more. It's just so annoying if I had bought my Cubase a month later I'd have been eligible for the grace period and free upgrade all the way to 7, now I'm stuck with 6.0 unless I pay 200€ AND will seemingly have to jump direct to 7...sigh...

Maybe I won't hurry. I can do everything I need to do right now very well. The only real reason I wanted the 6.5 was to see if it would work better in 64bit.

[ToddK]

Looks great! You might consider hanging some owens corning 703 panels in the walls and corners.
Wrap them in burlap or cheap fabric, and hang them everywhere. They will absorb low to mid frequency build up
that can cloud your mixes.
TK

[ToddK]

Looks great! You might consider hanging some owens corning 703 panels in the walls and corners.
Wrap them in burlap or cheap fabric, and hang them everywhere. They will absorb low to mid frequency build up
that can cloud your mixes.
TK

[deeaa*]

Looks great! You might consider hanging some owens corning 703 panels in the walls and corners.
Wrap them in burlap or cheap fabric, and hang them everywhere. They will absorb low to mid frequency build up
that can cloud your mixes.
TK

That's pretty much what those white panels are, similar stuff but especially designed for audio use. A few dozen of them on the walls, ceiling, and corner in a slant & filled with more fiberglass.

[Robert****]

Cool job there dee!

[Monkus]

that looks superb dee! If I had a recommendation, it would be to raise the krk's a bit to ear level... Great job!

[ToddK]

That's pretty much what those white panels are, similar stuff but especially designed for audio use. A few dozen of them on the walls, ceiling, and corner in a slant & filled with more fiberglass.

The white panels are not abosorbing mid or low frequencies. In order to do that, you need at least a 2 inch air gap between the panel and the wall or ceiling.
And the panels need to be much thicker and more dense. Generally, either owens corning insulation, or Rockwool. 4 to 6 inches thick at least.

[deeaa*]

The white panels are not abosorbing mid or low frequencies. In order to do that, you need at least a 2 inch air gap between the panel and the wall or ceiling.
And the panels need to be much thicker and more dense. Generally, either owens corning insulation, or Rockwool. 4 to 6 inches thick at least.

You're right, the panels aren't meant to absorb anything much past 500Hz. But you're not seeing everything there is, and don't know those panels are top notch audio panels, not just any random fiberglass. Each weighs about 5 pounds and has a layered construction and is glued to the surface with a special very thick glue that allows for a small hollow behind them as well. The absorption ratio of the 30mm extra dense sonic absorption panels is 0.8 down to 500Hz , nearing 1 @ 1KHz and flat one before 2KHz. It does absorb a little bit down to 125Hz, but for more low end absorption, the back wall has a bass trap over a foot thick in the middle and made of both the dense plates specifically designed for studio use and almost 2 foot thick layer of rockwool. Two walls (greenscreen and front) have a thin layer of gypsum protection and 10" of rockwool and very effectively absorb lowest frequencies as well, being 'floating walls'. One of the walls is left concrete with a bookcase etc. to break up the sound asymmetrically, which is alleviated by asymmetric speaker placement (to the room that is) and one wall is tilted in the middle to avoid room symmetricality. Foam and thick curtains breakup the highest frequencies.

It's nowhere near an acoustically perfect room, but I haven't met much better - or any better - in even largish commercial studios. This is way better than my measley gear and speakers even warrant. And because I've eliminated all noises from transformers to computer and everything, everybody who visits it says it's downright eerily echoless and quiet a room, which is quite fine for me. If I want to make the audio experience here even better, the only real solution would be to invest in a totally different class of speakers.

The biggest issue I have is the speaker projectivity, I need to sit in a very limited area to get a properly balanced sound. Just a foot to either direction and the sound begins to change.